DOJ alleges fraudulent security checks for Snowden

Government lawyers accuse company of releasing investigations that had not been complete

Published: 01/23/2014 at 6:04 PM

(NPR) The private contractor that signed off on background checks for both NSA leaker and Washington Navy Yard shooter is being accused of fraud by the Justice Department for allegedly submitting more than 650,000 incomplete investigations.

The Two-Way’s Eyder Peralta first reported in September that

In Wednesday’s complaint, USIS, the largest outside investigator for government security clearances, is accused of engaging in a practice it called “dumping” or “flushing,” that involved intentionally sending the government hundreds of thousands of cases that weren’t properly reviewed.

The complaint quotes one USIS official in a memo to his superiors in 2010 as saying cases had been “flushed … like a dead goldfish.”